Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a shaping apparatus and a shaping method.
Description of the Related Art
A shaping method and a shaping apparatus called additive manufacturing (AM), a three-dimensional printer, and rapid prototyping (RP) have been attracting attention (hereinafter the technique of this type is referred to as an AM technique). The AM technique is a technique in which a large number of pieces of cross-sectional shape data (referred to as slice data) are generated by slicing three-dimensional shape data, each layer is formed according to each slice data with a shaping material, and a three-dimensional object (solid object) is shaped by sequentially stacking the layers formed of the shaping material and fixing them. The AM technique does not require a mold and is capable of forming a complicated shape, and hence the AM technique is used for prototyping of a component and manufacturing of a single product or a small-lot product.
In the AM technique, various shaping systems are proposed conventionally. For example, WO 2013/044047 discloses a shaping method and a shaping apparatus that use an electrophotographic system. The shaping system disclosed in WO 2013/044047 is a system in which each layer (hereinafter referred to as a material layer) is formed of a shaping material based on slice data, and the formed material layer is heated and melted by a heater or the like and is stacked on a shaping platform.